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This is the final volume of a two volume set and it’s a really wonderful short series, or so I thought. Doing a little research suggests there will be a few others in the series, one novel and the two manga that mirror it are set to come out every year until 2013 according to the publisher's site. That said, Kieli volume two completes the story arc set up in the original first novel. The two manga to one novel ratio seems to be what they intend to publish yearly.

Volume two picks up with the orphan, Kieli, leaving school on holiday with Harvey, the only other person she has ever met who can see ghosts like she can. Unfortunately, Harvey is the Undying and is being hunted by the church. This is a weird colony planet that seemed to lose all its technology thanks to the church once the colony was established (think Dark Ages). The Undying were living soldiers who had a ‘core’ placed into their heart after death. They do not age. They heal from nearly everything, so long as their core is intact. They won the war for the church, which thanked them by blaming them for the war and hunting them all to extinction with weapons they had designed for this very purpose.

All Harvey wants to do is return to the place of the last battle, inside a cave, with his transistor radio in which lives the ghost of a Corporal who wants to go back to that place in order to cross over. Harvey never expected to meet someone like Kieli nor did he ever expect to care about anyone this much.

Their first stop is somewhere that allows Kieli to learn about Harvey’s past, which is tragic and interesting. By the time they finally get to the cavern, the Church soldiers, led by one of Harvey’s former friends and another Undying, have almost caught up to him. The Corporal and Harvey face a problem. Their freedom might mean Kieli’s future is going to be a short one. Harvey looks to sacrifice himself for her. Kieli finds herself in even more danger than Harvey could have predicted. This is a sweet, odd something of a romance. I found Kieli, Harvey and the Corporal very touching. I’m sorry the story was so short and would love to drop back in on them once Kieli isn’t a teen any more.

Even though there is a romantic overture to it, the love here is currently more of a family bonding kind of love, which made me fond of it even more. Kieli is only thirteen and Harvey, while trapped in the body of a young man, is still about nineteen or twenty in appearance and over eighty in real life. I’m not fond of romantic pairing when one partner is so young. That said, I don’t doubt future volumes might delve more into the unconventional romance between them.

The art is very pretty. Harvey and Kieli’s faces are very expressionate, even the Corporal’s the few times we see it. The special effects are left in place and translated. This is one of those stories that sticks around after you’re done with it. As I said earlier, the first two volumes of this manga correlate with the first novel and make for a touching story arc. Don’t let the idea that this might be a romance put you off if you’re an action genre lover. This has plenty of action and I highly recommend it.